Nancy Spero (August 24, 1926 – October 18, 2009) was an American visual artist known for her political and feminist paintings and hand pulled prints . Born in

Cleveland, Ohio Cleveland is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County, Ohio, Cuyahoga County. Located along the southern shore of Lake Erie, it is situated across the Canada–United States border, Canada–U.S. maritime border ...

, Spero lived for much of her life in New York City. She married and collaborated with artist

Leon Golub Leon Golub (January 23, 1922 – August 8, 2004) was an American painter. He was born in Chicago, Illinois, where he also studied, receiving his BA at the University of Chicago in 1942, and his BFA and MFA at the School of the Art Institute ...

. As both artist and activist, Nancy Spero had a career that spanned fifty years. She is known for her continuous engagement with contemporary political, social, and cultural concerns. Spero chronicled wars and apocalyptic violence as well as articulating visions of ecstatic rebirth and the celebratory cycles of life. Her complex network of collective and individual voices was a catalyst for the creation of her figurative lexicon representing women from prehistory to the present in such epic-scale paintings and collage on paper as ''Torture of Women'' (1976), ''Notes in Time on Women'' (1979) and ''The First Language'' (1981). In 2010, ''Notes in Time'' was posthumously reanimated as a digital scroll in the online magazine ''Triple Canopy''. Spero has had a number of retrospective exhibitions at major museums.

Early years

Spero was born in

in 1926. A year later her family moved to

Chicago Chicago is the List of municipalities in Illinois, most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of Unite ...

, where she grew up. After graduating from

New Trier High School New Trier High School (, also known as New Trier Township High School or NTHS) is a public four-year high school whose main campus for sophomores through seniors is in Winnetka, Illinois, United States, with a campus in Northfield, Illinois, for ...

, she studied at the School of the

Art Institute of Chicago The Art Institute of Chicago, founded in 1879, is one of the oldest and largest art museums in the United States. The museum is based in the Art Institute of Chicago Building in Chicago's Grant Park (Chicago), Grant Park. Its collection, stewa ...

, and graduated in 1949. Among Spero's peers at the Art Institute was a young GI who had returned from service in

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

. Spero and Golub exhibited at the

Hyde Park Art Center The Hyde Park Art Center (HPAC) is a visual arts organization and the oldest alternative exhibition space in the city of Chicago. Since 2006, HPAC has been located just north of Hyde Park Boulevard, at 5020 S.Cornell Avenue, in the Kenwood neigh ...

in Chicago as part of the group the Monster Roster.Richard Vine, "Where the Wild Things Were", '' Art in America'', May 1997, pp. 98-111. After graduating from the Art Institute of Chicago, Spero continued to study painting in Paris at the

École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts École or Ecole may refer to: * an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by secondary education establishments (collège and lycée) * École (river), a tributary of the Seine The Seine ( , ) is a river in nor ...

and at the Atelier of

André Lhote André Lhote (5 July 1885 – 24 January 1962) was a French Cubist painter of figure subjects, portraits, landscapes, and still life. He was also active and influential as a teacher and writer on art. Early life and education Lhote was bor ...

, an early

Cubist Cubism is an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement which began in Paris. It revolutionized painting and the visual arts, and sparked artistic innovations in music, ballet, literature, and architecture. Cubist subjects are analyzed, broke ...

painter, teacher and critic. Soon after her return to the United States in 1950, she married Leon Golub, and the two artists settled in Chicago. From 1956 to 1957, Spero and Golub lived and collaborated in Italy, while raising their three sons. Spero and Golub were equally committed to exploring a

modernist Modernism was an early 20th-century movement in literature, visual arts, and music that emphasized experimentation, abstraction, and Subjectivity and objectivity (philosophy), subjective experience. Philosophy, politics, architecture, and soc ...

representation of the human form, with its narratives and art historical resonances, even as

Abstract Expressionism Abstract expressionism in the United States emerged as a distinct art movement in the aftermath of World War II and gained mainstream acceptance in the 1950s, a shift from the American social realism of the 1930s influenced by the Great Depressi ...

was becoming the dominant idiom. In

Florence Florence ( ; ) is the capital city of the Italy, Italian region of Tuscany. It is also the most populated city in Tuscany, with 362,353 inhabitants, and 989,460 in Metropolitan City of Florence, its metropolitan province as of 2025. Florence ...

and

Ischia Ischia ( , , ) is a volcanic island in the Tyrrhenian Sea. It lies at the northern end of the Gulf of Naples, about from the city of Naples. It is the largest of the Phlegrean Islands. Although inhabited since the Bronze Age, as a Ancient G ...

, Spero became intrigued by the format, style and mood of

Etruscan __NOTOC__ Etruscan may refer to: Ancient civilization *Etruscan civilization (1st millennium BC) and related things: **Etruscan language ** Etruscan architecture **Etruscan art **Etruscan cities **Etruscan coins **Etruscan history **Etruscan myt ...

and

Roman Roman or Romans most often refers to: *Rome, the capital city of Italy *Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD *Roman people, the people of Roman civilization *Epistle to the Romans, shortened to Romans, a letter w ...

fresco Fresco ( or frescoes) is a technique of mural painting executed upon freshly laid ("wet") lime plaster. Water is used as the vehicle for the dry-powder pigment to merge with the plaster, and with the setting of the plaster, the painting become ...

es and

sarcophagi A sarcophagus (: sarcophagi or sarcophaguses) is a coffin, most commonly carved in stone, and usually displayed above ground, though it may also be buried. The word ''sarcophagus'' comes from the Greek σάρξ ' meaning "flesh", and φ� ...

which would have influence on her later work. Finding a more varied, inclusive and international atmosphere in Europe than in the New York art world of the time, Spero and her family moved to Paris, living there from 1959 to 1964. Spero's third son was born in Paris, and the artist had major solo exhibitions in Paris at Galerie Breteau in 1962, 1964, and 1968. During this period, Spero painted a series titled ''Black Paintings'' depicting themes including mothers and children, lovers, prostitutes, and hybrid, human-animal forms. This collection of works has a more personal meaning for her, rather than political.

Later years

Spero and Golub returned to New York in 1964, where the couple remained to live and work. The

Vietnam War The Vietnam War (1 November 1955 – 30 April 1975) was an armed conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia fought between North Vietnam (Democratic Republic of Vietnam) and South Vietnam (Republic of Vietnam) and their allies. North Vietnam w ...

was raging and the Civil Rights Movement was exploding. Affected by images of the war broadcast nightly on television and the unrest and violence evident in the streets, Spero began her ''War Series'' from 1966 to 1970. These small

gouache Gouache (; ), body color, or opaque watercolor is a water-medium paint consisting of natural pigment, water, a binding agent (usually gum arabic or dextrin), and sometimes additional inert material. Gouache is designed to be opaque. Gouach ...

and inks on paper, executed rapidly, represented the obscenity and destruction of war. The ''War Series'' is among the most sustained and powerful group of works in the genre of history painting that condemns war and its real and lasting consequences. An

activist Activism consists of efforts to promote, impede, direct or intervene in social, political, economic or environmental reform with the desire to make changes in society toward a perceived common good. Forms of activism range from mandate build ...

and early

feminist Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideology, ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social gender equality, equality of the sexes. Feminism holds the position that modern soci ...

, Spero was a member of the Art Workers Coalition (1968–69), Women Artists in Revolution (1969), and Ad Hoc Committee of Women Artists (1971) the work of which developed into the first women's cooperative gallery,

A.I.R. Gallery A.I.R. Gallery (Artists in Residence) is the first all female artists cooperative gallery in the United States. It was founded in 1972 with the objective of providing a professional and permanent exhibition space for women artists during a time ...

(Artists in Residence) in

SoHo SoHo, short for "South of Houston Street, Houston Street", is a neighborhood in Lower Manhattan, New York City. Since the 1970s, the neighborhood has been the location of many artists' lofts and art galleries, art installations such as The Wall ...

, of which she was a founding member. It was during this period that Spero completed her "Artaud Paintings" (1969–70), finding her artistic "voice" and developing her signature scroll paintings, the ''Codex Artaud'' (1971–1972), in which she directly quoted the writings of the poet and playwright

Antonin Artaud Antoine Maria Joseph Paul Artaud (; ; 4September 18964March 1948), better known as Antonin Artaud, was a French artist who worked across a variety of media. He is best known for his writings, as well as his work in the theatre and cinema. Widely ...

. Uniting text and image, printed on long scrolls of paper, glued end-to-end and tacked on the walls of A.I.R., Spero violated the formal presentation, choice of valued medium and scale of framed paintings. Although her collaged and painted scrolls were Homeric in both scope and depth, the artist shunned the grandiose in content as well as style, relying instead on intimacy and immediacy, while also revealing the continuum of shocking political realities underlying enduring myths. In a 2008 interview in ''

The Brooklyn Rail ''The Brooklyn Rail'' is an American publication and platform for the arts, culture, humanities, and politics, based in Brooklyn, New York. It features in-depth critical essays, fiction, poetry, as well as interviews with artists, critics, and ...

'' with publisher Phong Bui, Spero says of her early identification with

Artaud Antoine Maria Joseph Paul Artaud (; ; 4September 18964March 1948), better known as Antonin Artaud, was a French artist who worked across a variety of media. He is best known for his writings, as well as his work in the theatre and cinema. Widely ...

: "For me, the spoken words were part of the body, as if whatever I was trying to paint, and my own awareness of pain and anger—you can call it the destruction of the self—was an integral part, that duality. Things get split up right in the middle, which I was very much interested in at that moment in my life." In 1974, Spero chose to focus on themes involving women and their representation in various cultures. Her ''Torture in Chile'' (1974) and the long scroll, ''Torture of Women'' (1976, 20 inches x 125 feet), interweave oral testimonies with images of women throughout history, linking the contemporary governmental brutality of Latin American dictatorships (from

Amnesty International Amnesty International (also referred to as Amnesty or AI) is an international non-governmental organization focused on human rights, with its headquarters in the United Kingdom. The organization says that it has more than ten million members a ...

reports) with the historical repression of women. Spero re-presented previously obscured women's histories, cultural mythology, and literary references with her expressive figuration. Rarely exhibited, ''Torture of Women'' was translated into book form in 2009. Spero manifested a desire for women to be a part of the art conversation. Spero's most mature work lives along the lines of a peinture feminine. This is when a woman is the subject as well as the "artistic consciousness". Spero's open-ended, thought provoking compositions of ruthless uncomfortable subject matter was depicted in hangings and friezes. This is seen in ''Helicopter, Victim, Astronaut'', made in 1968 of gouache and ink on paper. Spero uses the crimes and assaults on women from all eras and cultures to provide intense and emotional imagery for her art and text. Political violence, sexism, and life-threatening situations that women endure are subjects she explored throughout her career, but especially in the 1960s and 19702. These interests are evidence of Spero's conviction that "the personal and the political are indistinguishable." Spero was influenced by

Jean Dubuffet Jean Philippe Arthur Dubuffet (; 31 July 1901 – 12 May 1985) was a French Painting, painter and sculpture, sculptor of the School of Paris, École de Paris (School of Paris). His idealistic approach to aesthetics embraced so-called "low art" a ...

Simone de Beauvoir Simone Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir (, ; ; 9 January 1908 – 14 April 1986) was a French existentialist philosopher, writer, social theorist, and feminist activist. Though she did not consider herself a philosopher, nor was she ...

; and

Hélène Cixous Hélène Cixous (; ; born 5 June 1937) is a French writer, playwright and Literary criticism, literary critic. During her academic career, she was primarily associated with the Centre universitaire de Vincennes (today's University of Paris VIII) ...

. Developing a pictographic language of body gestures and motion, a bodily hieroglyphics, Spero reconstructed the diversity of representations of women from pre-history to the present. From 1976 through 1979, she researched and worked on ''Notes in Time on Women'', a 20 inch by 210 foot paper scroll. She elaborated and amplified this theme in ''The First Language'' (1979–81, 20 inches by 190 feet), eschewing text altogether in favor of an irregular rhythm of painted, hand-printed, and collaged figures, thus creating her "cast of characters." In 1983, Spero began using, in her large scroll paintings, an exuberantly vaginal female figure going by the name of Sheela-na-gig. The acknowledgement of Spero's international status as a preeminent figurative and feminist artist was signaled in 1987 by her traveling retrospective exhibitions in the United States and United Kingdom. By 1988, she developed her first wall installations. For these installations, Spero extended the picture plane of the scrolls by moving her printed images directly onto the walls of museums and public spaces. Harnessing a capacious imaginative energy and a ferocious will, Spero continued to mine the full range of power relations. In 1987, following retrospective exhibitions in the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada, the artist created images that leapt from the scroll surface to the wall surface, refiguring representational forms of women over time and engaging in a dialogue with architectural space. Spero's wall paintings in Chicago,

Vienna Vienna ( ; ; ) is the capital city, capital, List of largest cities in Austria, most populous city, and one of Federal states of Austria, nine federal states of Austria. It is Austria's primate city, with just over two million inhabitants. ...

Dresden Dresden (; ; Upper Saxon German, Upper Saxon: ''Dräsdn''; , ) is the capital city of the States of Germany, German state of Saxony and its second most populous city after Leipzig. It is the List of cities in Germany by population, 12th most p ...

Toronto Toronto ( , locally pronounced or ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, most populous city in Canada. It is the capital city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Ontario. With a p ...

, and

Derry Derry, officially Londonderry, is the second-largest City status in the United Kingdom, city in Northern Ireland, and the fifth-largest on the island of Ireland. Located in County Londonderry, the city now covers both banks of the River Fo ...

form poetic reconstructions of the diversity of representations of women from the ancient to the contemporary world, validating a subjectivity of female experience. Spero expressed her art once in this way: "I've always sought to express a tension in form and meaning in order to achieve a veracity. I have come to the conclusion that the art world has to join us, women artists, not we join it. When women are in leadership roles and gain rewards and recognition, then perhaps 'we' (women and men) can all work together in art world actions." Nancy Spero died of heart failure in Manhattan on October 18, 2009. She is buried in

Green-Wood Cemetery Green-Wood Cemetery is a cemetery in the western portion of Brooklyn, New York City. The cemetery is located between South Slope, Brooklyn, South Slope/Greenwood Heights, Brooklyn, Greenwood Heights, Park Slope, Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn, Win ...

, in

Brooklyn, New York Brooklyn is a Boroughs of New York City, borough of New York City located at the westernmost end of Long Island in the New York (state), State of New York. Formerly an independent city, the borough is coextensive with Kings County, one of twelv ...

. She was interviewed for the 2010 film '' !Women Art Revolution''.

Honors

2006 * Elected a member of the

American Academy of Arts and Letters The American Academy of Arts and Letters is a 300-member honor society whose goal is to "foster, assist, and sustain excellence" in American literature, Music of the United States, music, and Visual art of the United States, art. Its fixed number ...

. 2005 * Lifetime Achievement Award from the

College Art Association The College Art Association of America (CAA) is the principal organization in the United States for professionals in the visual arts, from students to art historians to emeritus faculty. Founded in 1911, it "promotes these arts and their understan ...

2003 * Honor Award from the

Women's Caucus for Art The Women's Caucus for Art (WCA), founded in 1972, is a non-profit organization based in New York City, which supports women artists, art historians, students, educators, and museum professionals. The WCA holds exhibitions and conferences to promo ...

1995 * Hiroshima Art Prize (awarded jointly to Spero and Golub) from the

Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art The is an art museum founded in 1989. It is in Hijiyama Park in Hiroshima, Japan. The building was designed by architect Kisho Kurokawa. It was the first public contemporary art museum to open in Japan, and its exhibitions focus on post-1945, c ...

1995 * Skowhegan Medal from the

Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture The Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture is an artists residency located in Madison, Maine, just outside of Skowhegan. Every year, the program accepts online applications from emerging artists from November through January, and selects 65 ...

Media appearances

* Spero as herself, ''Nancy Spero: Becoming an Artist'', 2008 * Spero as herself, '' !Women Art Revolution'', 2010 * Spero as herself, ''Nancy Spero: Collaboration'', 2012 * Spero as herself, ''Nancy Spero: Paper Mirror'', 2019

References

Sources

* Arkesteijn, Roel, ''Codex Spero. Nancy Spero Selected Writing and Interviews 1950-2008''. Roma Publications, 2008. * Bird, Jon ed., ''Otherworlds: The Art of Nancy Spero and

Kiki Smith Kiki Smith (born January 18, 1954) is a German-born American artist whose work has addressed the themes of sex, birth and regeneration. Her figurative work of the late 1980s and early 1990s confronted subjects such as AIDS, feminism, and gender ...

'' (London: Reaktion Books, Ltd., 2003) * Bird, Jon, Jo Anna Isaak, and Sylvere Lotringer, ''Nancy Spero'' (London: Phaidon Press Limited, 1996) * Bird, Jon and Lisa Tickner, ''Nancy Spero'', exhib. cat. (London:

Institute of Contemporary Arts The Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) is an modernism, artistic and cultural centre on The Mall (London), The Mall in London, just off Trafalgar Square. Located within Nash House, part of Carlton House Terrace, near the Duke of York Steps a ...

, 1987) * Breerette, Geneviève, ''Spero, The Paris Black Paintings'', 2007 () * Buchloh, Benjamin, "Spero's Other Traditions", in: ''Inside the Visible'', edited by

Catherine de Zegher Catherine de Zegher (born Marie-Catherine Alma Gladys de Zegher Groningen, April 14, 1955) is a Belgian curator and a modern and contemporary art historian. She has a degree in art history and archaeology from the University of Ghent. From 1988 ...

, MIT Press, 1996 * Frizzell, Deborah
“Nancy Spero’s War Maypole: Take No Prisoners”
''Cultural Politics'' v. 5, no. 1 (March 2009) * Frizzell, Deborah, "Nancy Spero's Museum Incursions: Isis on the Threshold," ''Woman's Art Journal'' v. 27, no.2 (Fall/Winter 2006) * Frizzell, Deborah, "Nancy Spero's Installations and Institutional Incursions, 1987-2001; Dialogues Within the Museum, and Elsewhere," (Ph.D. Dissertation, Graduate Center of CUNY, 2004) * Frizzell, Deborah and Susanne Altmann, ''Nancy Spero: A Continuous Present'', exhib. cat. (Kiel, Germany: Kunsthalle zu Kiel and the University of Kiel, 2002) * Harris, Susan, ''Nancy Spero'', exhib. cat. (Malmö: Malmö Konsthall, 1994) * Harris, Susan, ''Nancy Spero: Weighing the Heart Against a Feather of Truth'' (Spain: Santiago de Compostela, Centro Galego de Arte Contemporanea, 2005) *
''Jewish Women's Archive''
Nancy Spero page * Julian, Linda ed., ''Nancy Spero, 1993 Emrys Journal'', exhib. cat. (Greenville, South Carolina: Greenville County Museum of Art, 1993) * Lyon, Christopher, ''Nancy Spero: The Work'' (Munich and New York: Prestel, 2010) * Macgregor, Elizabeth A. and Catherine de Zegher, ''Nancy Spero'', exhib. cat., (Birmingham, U.K.: Ikon Gallery, 1998) * Nahas, Dominique ed., ''Nancy Spero: Works Since 1950'', exhib. cat. (Syracuse, New York:

Everson Museum of Art The Everson Museum of Art ( ) in Downtown Syracuse, New York, is a major Central New York museum focusing on American art. History The museum was founded in 1897 by art historian George Fisk Comfort (who also helped found the Metropolitan Museu ...

, 1987) * PBS
Biography, interviews, essays, artwork images and video clips
from

PBS The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcaster and non-commercial, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly funded nonprofit organization and the most prominent provider of educat ...

series '' Art:21 -- Art in the Twenty-First Century'' - Season 4 (2007) * Purdom, Judy, "Nancy Spero and Woman in Performance", in Florence, P. and Foster, N. (eds.), ''Differential Aesthetics'', Ashgate, 2000. * Stiles, Kristine and Peter Selz eds., Nancy Spero. "Woman as Protagonist: Interview with Jeanne Siegel", in ''Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art'', Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996, pp. 244–246. * Storr, Robert et Leon Golub, ''The War Series (1966-1970)'', 2003 () * Walker, Joanna S., 'Nancy Spero 1926-2009', ''Art Monthly'', no. 332 (Dec-Jan 09–10) * Walker, Joanna S., 'An Encounter with Nancy Spero', ''n.paradoxa'', Vol. 24 (July 2009) * Walker, Joanna S., 'The body is present even if in disguise: tracing the trace in the art work of Nancy Spero and Ana Mendieta', ''Tate Papers'', Issue 11 (Spring 2009). See https://web.archive.org/web/20110109200439/http://www.tate.org.uk/research/tateresearch/tatepapers/09spring/joanna-walker.shtm * Walker, Joanna S., Review of Nancy Spero's retrospective at MACBA, ''Art Monthly'', no. 320 (October 2008) * Walker, Joanna S., "Nancy Spero: An Encounter in Three Parts. Performance, Poetry and Dance" (PhD Thesis, University College London, 2008) * Weskott, Hanne, ''Nancy Spero in der Glyptothek, Arbeiten auf Papier, 1981–1991'', exhib. cat. (

Munich Munich is the capital and most populous city of Bavaria, Germany. As of 30 November 2024, its population was 1,604,384, making it the third-largest city in Germany after Berlin and Hamburg. Munich is the largest city in Germany that is no ...

: Glyptothek am Koenigsplatz Muenchen, 1991)

External links

Nancy Spero

Obituary, The Guardian

Nancy Spero
exhibition at the Serpentine Galleries 2011 *

Pompidou Centre The Centre Pompidou (), more fully the (), also known as the Pompidou Centre in English and colloquially as Beaubourg, is a building complex in Paris, France. It was designed in the style of high-tech architecture by the architectural team of ...

, exhibition: ''elles@centrepompidou'

2010.
Interview with Phong Bui
in ''The Brooklyn Rail'', Jul/Aug 2008

Christine König Galerie, Vienna, Austria
Torture of Women at Siglio Press
{{DEFAULTSORT:Spero, Nancy 1926 births 2009 deaths Artists from Cleveland 20th-century American painters 20th-century American women painters 21st-century American painters 21st-century American women painters American alumni of the École des Beaux-Arts American contemporary painters American feminist artists American printmakers American women printmakers Burials at Green-Wood Cemetery Jewish American artists Jewish American feminists Members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters National Academy of Design members New Trier High School alumni School of the Art Institute of Chicago alumni American collage artists American women collage artists